People have been counting down to today for months – pitchers and catchers (and several position players) have reported to Bradenton. It’s not really that exciting if you ask me – spring training gets boring very quickly, and in this particular season for the Pirates, there isn’t a whole lot that’s going to be decided during the spring. That said, it does create some stuff to talk about, and more importantly it means we are another step closer to another season of real baseball.

This organization is all I’ve known, and hopefully it will be the only one I ever know,” Walker said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with the Tribune-Review. “But it’s an interesting part of my career right now. This offseason has been an emotional roller coaster with some of the things that have gone on.”

Does Walker still have hope he can reach an agreement on a multiyear contract with the Pirates?

“I’ve bled black and gold my entire life. And I’ve always seen myself as about as optimistic a person as there is,” Walker said, choosing his words carefully. “But … that’s a hard question to answer after this offseason. I am optimistic, but at the same time … there are so many different factors that go into this.”

We’re going to hear about this a lot as the year goes on. Hopefully it doesn’t get messy but it might be headed that way.

The Trib had a piece this weekend about how the Pirates will place some extra focus on their pitchers’ offense this spring. That was a welcome sight to me, because just off the top of my head, that’s definitely been a big weakness for the Pirates – not just pitchers being bad at hitting in general, but far worse than other teams’ pitchers. For a while I’ve figured this was sort of an under-rated problem for the Pirates that they could really benefit from correcting.

The numbers do agree that it’s an issue, although it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought in 2014. Pirates pitchers had the worst strikeout rate in the league, 41.1%, and hit .100/.135/.113, good for 12th out of 15 in the NL in wOBA.

But is it really that big of a deal? As this CBS article pointed out, those numbers accounted for -0.7 WAR. The NL average was about -0.2. The best hitting pitchers in the NL (the Dodgers) posted 1.5 WAR – so if the Pirates were to make that jump all the way up to the best, it would be about a two-win swing. Two wins could be huge – the Pirates lost the NL Central by two games last year – but that’s a best case scenario. It’s not as big of an impact as I initially guessed, and besides, the Pirates’ starting pitching staff is mostly the same this year, adding A.J. Burnett and subtracting Edinson Volquez. Maybe that’s a slight improvement in hitting ability (Volquez was awful) but not much. A little extra BP is not going to turn the likes of Liriano, Morton, and Locke into sluggers.

On the other hand, one area where that group can definitely improve is the sacrifice bunt. Bucs pitchers bunted at a 56.3% success rate (36/64), not good but not far behind the NL average of 60.3%. A mere handful of additional successful bunts would have made them an above average team, so that doesn’t appear to be a place where they left a ton of runs on the table. The same goes for productive outs, a stat measured by Baseball Reference. There just aren’t enough of these opportunities for an improvement to help all that much. Last year the pitchers were 22/84 (22.6%), while league average (for all positions, not just pitchers) was 31%…so getting to that mark would take a grand total of four additional productive outs. Maybe that turns out to be significant in some individual situations, but not in the grand scheme over 162 games. It’s also worth noting that Volquez was the best “productive out producer” at 62%, so replacing him with Burnett (1/9 last year) will likely hurt the cause a bit.

So in the end, this turned out to be a fairly long, number-heavy look at something that doesn’t matter very much. Yes, the Pirates have room to get better when it comes to pitcher’s offense, but a modest improvement probably wouldn’t change things much. I’m glad to hear they are trying to address it, but it isn’t some huge opportunity/market inefficiency they are missing out on, and it probably isn’t even worth subtracting any significant time from legitimate pitching work/preparation.

I didn’t think it was possible for me to have any more respect for Cutch, but this is some impressive stuff from a guy that has impressed on and off the field in pretty much every way possible the last few years. And of course, he’s right about this being a legitimate issue. It would be nice if MLB would focus on this a little more instead of trying to drum up interest for the game by tweaking the strike zone or limiting defensive shifting.

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ESPN’s David Schoenfield ranked the Pirates third in all of baseball and has them surpassing the Cardinals in 2015. One meaningless preseason prediction is just that, but as of now it appears to be a near-unanimous consensus that the Pirates are established contenders going into the year, which is something we couldn’t really say a year ago and certainly not in any prior years during the losing streak.

And while it may seem like a bit of a stretch to put the Pirates ahead of St. Louis right now, especially after what happened in the postseason, recall that the Pirates finished all of 2 games behind the Cards last year, and beat them in run differential (+51 vs +16). I would still put the Bucs slightly behind because of the loss of Russell Martin, but the gap is not very big.

The James Shields signing on Monday was probably the final significant move of this MLB offseason, barring a late trade. Shields was the last big free agent remaining and the start of spring training is just over a week away. With that in mind, here’s a look at how things have shifted in the NL – who’s in and who’s out – along with some quick thoughts.

For “In” I included all new acquisitions listed on a team’s projected lineup/rotation/bullpen on RosterResource.com (a great site – formerly MLBDepthCharts). For “Out” I skimmed the transactions page for any departures that I (arbitrarily) deemed remotely notable.

Still the division favorite, and the addition of Heyward is potentially scary. The pitching staff could suffer a bit with the losses of Miller and Neshek, who was great for them in the bullpen, but they always have the depth to replace guys like that.

Not a lot to like here for the Brew Crew. Lind could be a good addition at first but that’s about it, and shipping Gallardo out for prospects isn’t a great signal to send going into this season, even if it made sense long term. Worth noting that K-Rod is still out there as a FA and could re-sigh.

A disastrous 2014 apparently didn’t motivate the Reds to improve, as they shipped off two big pieces of their rotation and did not add much (for the present) in return. With the resurgence of the Cubs, Cincinnati might be the early favorite to occupy the Central’s basement.

The clear “paper champions” of the offseason. The Cubs added an elite SP, another rotation piece, a very good catcher, a useful OF, and some decent depth. Add that to their young talent that impressed somewhat in 2014, plus some more big time prospects approaching the majors, and they could be legit.

Thoughts on the Central: It looks like the Cards at the top and the Pirates right behind again, with the big question being how much ground the Cubs can make up with their huge winter. The Brewers and Reds still have enough left to compete under a best case scenario, but neither of those teams looks to be getting better.

It appears the Phils are finally starting to commit to a much-needed rebuild. About time.

Thoughts on the East: Nats should run away with it easily. The Marlins and Mets have interesting talent but don’t really appear to be complete teams yet. The Phillies are still a mess and the Braves look like a mess now as well.

The champs won’t look too different this year, although the Panda is obviously a big loss. Don’t forget they won it all despite some big injuries (Pagan, Cain), so they could possibly return even stronger.

Serious rebuilding time for the Snakes. They became one of Pittsburgh’s most hated teams in 2014 and Pirate fans probably won’t mind seeing them go through what looks to be a brutal season.

Thoughts on the West: Much like the Central, there are two established contenders and an upstart former afterthought looking to make noise after a huge winter. The difference is that the other two teams in the division look absolutely awful.

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What do you think…who’s better, who’s worse, who could improve/regress for other reasons beyond offseason moves?

Vance Worley became the first Pirate since Ross Ohlendorf to defeat the club in a salary arbitration hearing, so he will earn $2.45 million instead of $2 million this year. Good for him, but let’s hope that’s where the similarities end between Vance and Ross. As far as I know, Vance didn’t spend the winter as an intern in Washington, so that’s a good start. He also didn’t go 1-11 last year, which is what Ohlendorf’s record was when he won that hearing.

James Shields signed with the Padres, which finalized 2015 draft positioning (because he was the last player to sign following a declined QO). The Pirates moved up a couple of spots thanks to free agent draft pick compensation and will pick 19th this year. They also have the 32nd pick as compensation for the loss of Russell Martin (who declined the QO). Their projected draft pick spending pool is about $7.7 million, a slight bump up from last year (just under $7.1 million).